Clearing the air of spin

Marian Wilkinson | April 21, 2007

"It's the hottest year, the hottest decade, the hottest minimum,
the hottest maximum," the hapless former environment minister, Ian
Campbell, declared when the Bureau of Meteorology released its
figures on Australia's climate for 2005. "The main thing is not to
alarm people."

Spinning the message on global warming has been elevated to an
art throughout the long, hot decade of John Howard's Government.
And few people have charted this more forensically or more
assiduously than Clive Hamilton, the pugnacious head of the
Australia Institute.

In Scorcher: the Dirty Politics of Climate Change, Hamilton
explores one of the great "spin messages" of the debate in
Australia. This is the simple, consoling argument that Australia is
doing better than almost all its European critics when it comes to
cutting greenhouse gases: we are "on track to meet our Kyoto
targets".

Australia is the only country, apart from the US, that did not
ratify the Kyoto accord, the UN's agreement on cutting greenhouse
gases. Central to Howard's defence of that defining decision is his
argument that Australia is nevertheless one of the few countries
that has stuck to the target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions
demanded by Kyoto. According to that target, over the next five
years Australia will increase its greenhouse emissions by only 8
per cent on 1990 levels - this, despite our fantastic decade of
economic growth.

Huh? say the critics. If that's the case, why are we accused of
being the highest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases in the
world?

Hamilton explains the inexplicable. Put simply, Australia's
emissions from the use of fossil fuels have not gone down or even
levelled out since 1990. Instead, they have escalated rapidly. In
the past 14 years they have risen by 24 per cent and the largest
source of those emissions is what is called "stationary energy",
or, basically, electricity production. Most of this production is
from coal-fired power.

The accounting trick that allows us to meet the Kyoto target is
explained by the so-called "Australia clause" in the Kyoto accord.
That clause granted a significant concession to Australia after it
was feared we would pull out of the process in 1997. The clause
allowed Australia to become the only industrialised country to
count greenhouse gas emissions from land clearing when calculating
the amount of its overall emissions and therefore the size of its
cuts.

The year taken as the benchmark for measuring these emissions
was 1990 - co-incidentally a year of massive land clearing in
Australia. That year, 675,000 hectares were bulldozed, adding more
than 129 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to Australia's
emissions.

That disastrous scale of land clearing has never been repeated.
But, as Hamilton explains, because Australia was allowed to use the
inflated emissions from the inclusion of land clearing as its
benchmark, it gave it a big cushion against making any real cuts to
emissions from energy production, transport and industry.

Put simply, if you excluded land clearing, Australia has
increased its total emissions by 25 per cent, not the 8 per cent
demanded by the Kyoto accord. As well, most European countries were
required to cut their 1990 emission levels by 8 per cent, not
allowed to increase them by 8 per cent, as Australian negotiators
demanded for us.

The sweet deal Australia won at Kyoto has annoyed our European
critics ever since, especially when the Howard Government decided
not to ratify Kyoto in 2002, falling in line with the Bush
Administration.

The other spin message Hamilton attacks is the recurring
argument from Howard and his successive environment ministers that
Australia contributes "only" 1.4 per cent of the world's global
emissions and if we eliminated all of these tomorrow it would have
no effect.

This argument particularly annoys Chinese officials, who archly
made the point at a Nairobi conference last year that Australia's
per capita emissions were higher than China's. They also noted that
70 per cent of the emissions already in the atmosphere were
produced by industrial nations, not new developing economies such
as China and India.

Hamilton says: "Australia also has the highest annual emissions
per capita of any industrialised country, at almost 27 tonnes per
person."

Perhaps the biggest misconception is about the cost of ratifying
Kyoto. The Government has long argued that "Australia is a net
exporter of energy and that puts us in a very special position
unlike most developed countries". The reality is that our energy
exports, such as coal and natural gas, contribute little to our
greenhouse gas emissions. The countries that import these, such as
Japan, count the emissions from the coal and gas they burn at their
end.

At the heart of Hamilton's sometimes polemic arguments is a
critical message. The policies pursued over the past decade in
Australia in response to global warming have simply not worked.

Many of these policies are centred on carrots for industry or
exhortations to consumers to do the right thing - and so far these
have had limited success.

These voluntary attempts to make us cleaner and greener, he
argues, "serves the purpose of giving the impression that something
is being done while imposing no constraint on the big
polluters".

But in the past year both major parties have signalled a new
approach to global warming as they scramble to catch up with a
seismic shift in public and business opinion. And there is no more
telling weathervane of this than Rupert Murdoch. Hamilton charts
Murdoch's shift to a gathering in California last July, when Al
Gore addressed News Corp executives and senior writers on his
documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Since then, the London Sun has
"gone green" and BSkyB has declared itself carbon neutral.

Murdoch is now tipped to make a major announcement on his
empire's serious approach to climate change next month, when he is
expected to announce all of News Corp's businesses will pursue
efforts to cut their greenhouse gases.

Hamilton asks whether this will leave Murdoch's flagship
newspaper here, The Australian, out on a limb because of its past
coverage of climate sceptics.

In response, The Australian's editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell,
argues that he has published a range of views on climate change,
and that while his paper has been "not as green as you might like"
it was not "anti-green". But he noted, "given our readership, our
practical approach to measures of climate change sits easily with
the views of people who pay for the paper each day".

Scorcher: the Dirty Politics of Climate Change (Black Inc,
$29.95) by Clive Hamilton, will be published on Monday. Hamilton
will discuss Scorcher at the Seymour Theatre Centre on Tuesday at
6.30pm.

"It's the hottest year, the hottest decade, the hottest minimum,
the hottest maximum," the hapless former environment minister, Ian
Campbell, declared when the Bureau of Meteorology released its
figures on Australia's climate for 2005. "The main thing is not to
alarm people."

Spinning the message on global warming has been elevated to an
art throughout the long, hot decade of John Howard's Government.
And few people have charted this more forensically or more
assiduously than Clive Hamilton, the pugnacious head of the
Australia Institute.

In Scorcher: the Dirty Politics of Climate Change, Hamilton
explores one of the great "spin messages" of the debate in
Australia. This is the simple, consoling argument that Australia is
doing better than almost all its European critics when it comes to
cutting greenhouse gases: we are "on track to meet our Kyoto
targets".

Australia is the only country, apart from the US, that did not
ratify the Kyoto accord, the UN's agreement on cutting greenhouse
gases. Central to Howard's defence of that defining decision is his
argument that Australia is nevertheless one of the few countries
that has stuck to the target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions
demanded by Kyoto. According to that target, over the next five
years Australia will increase its greenhouse emissions by only 8
per cent on 1990 levels - this, despite our fantastic decade of
economic growth.

Huh? say the critics. If that's the case, why are we accused of
being the highest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases in the
world?

Hamilton explains the inexplicable. Put simply, Australia's
emissions from the use of fossil fuels have not gone down or even
levelled out since 1990. Instead, they have escalated rapidly. In
the past 14 years they have risen by 24 per cent and the largest
source of those emissions is what is called "stationary energy",
or, basically, electricity production. Most of this production is
from coal-fired power.

The accounting trick that allows us to meet the Kyoto target is
explained by the so-called "Australia clause" in the Kyoto accord.
That clause granted a significant concession to Australia after it
was feared we would pull out of the process in 1997. The clause
allowed Australia to become the only industrialised country to
count greenhouse gas emissions from land clearing when calculating
the amount of its overall emissions and therefore the size of its
cuts.

The year taken as the benchmark for measuring these emissions
was 1990 - co-incidentally a year of massive land clearing in
Australia. That year, 675,000 hectares were bulldozed, adding more
than 129 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to Australia's
emissions.

That disastrous scale of land clearing has never been repeated.
But, as Hamilton explains, because Australia was allowed to use the
inflated emissions from the inclusion of land clearing as its
benchmark, it gave it a big cushion against making any real cuts to
emissions from energy production, transport and industry.

Put simply, if you excluded land clearing, Australia has
increased its total emissions by 25 per cent, not the 8 per cent
demanded by the Kyoto accord. As well, most European countries were
required to cut their 1990 emission levels by 8 per cent, not
allowed to increase them by 8 per cent, as Australian negotiators
demanded for us.

The sweet deal Australia won at Kyoto has annoyed our European
critics ever since, especially when the Howard Government decided
not to ratify Kyoto in 2002, falling in line with the Bush
Administration.

The other spin message Hamilton attacks is the recurring
argument from Howard and his successive environment ministers that
Australia contributes "only" 1.4 per cent of the world's global
emissions and if we eliminated all of these tomorrow it would have
no effect.

This argument particularly annoys Chinese officials, who archly
made the point at a Nairobi conference last year that Australia's
per capita emissions were higher than China's. They also noted that
70 per cent of the emissions already in the atmosphere were
produced by industrial nations, not new developing economies such
as China and India.

Hamilton says: "Australia also has the highest annual emissions
per capita of any industrialised country, at almost 27 tonnes per
person."

Perhaps the biggest misconception is about the cost of ratifying
Kyoto. The Government has long argued that "Australia is a net
exporter of energy and that puts us in a very special position
unlike most developed countries". The reality is that our energy
exports, such as coal and natural gas, contribute little to our
greenhouse gas emissions. The countries that import these, such as
Japan, count the emissions from the coal and gas they burn at their
end.

At the heart of Hamilton's sometimes polemic arguments is a
critical message. The policies pursued over the past decade in
Australia in response to global warming have simply not worked.

Many of these policies are centred on carrots for industry or
exhortations to consumers to do the right thing - and so far these
have had limited success.

These voluntary attempts to make us cleaner and greener, he
argues, "serves the purpose of giving the impression that something
is being done while imposing no constraint on the big
polluters".

But in the past year both major parties have signalled a new
approach to global warming as they scramble to catch up with a
seismic shift in public and business opinion. And there is no more
telling weathervane of this than Rupert Murdoch. Hamilton charts
Murdoch's shift to a gathering in California last July, when Al
Gore addressed News Corp executives and senior writers on his
documentary, An Inconvenient Truth. Since then, the London Sun has
"gone green" and BSkyB has declared itself carbon neutral.

Murdoch is now tipped to make a major announcement on his
empire's serious approach to climate change next month, when he is
expected to announce all of News Corp's businesses will pursue
efforts to cut their greenhouse gases.

Hamilton asks whether this will leave Murdoch's flagship
newspaper here, The Australian, out on a limb because of its past
coverage of climate sceptics.

In response, The Australian's editor-in-chief, Chris Mitchell,
argues that he has published a range of views on climate change,
and that while his paper has been "not as green as you might like"
it was not "anti-green". But he noted, "given our readership, our
practical approach to measures of climate change sits easily with
the views of people who pay for the paper each day".

Scorcher: the Dirty Politics of Climate Change (Black Inc,
$29.95) by Clive Hamilton, will be published on Monday. Hamilton
will discuss Scorcher at the Seymour Theatre Centre on Tuesday at
6.30pm.

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